American Pessimism

[Abishai100]

Could America's preoccupation with high-traffic, media hysteria (e.g., celebrities), and all kinds of social networking (e.g., Facebook) be creating eschewed perspectives on fame and democracy idealism?

Here's a fictional short-story I wrote (about American celebrities caught up in Halloween-related traffic and media mischief) inspired by an Ivan Reitman film.



Dave (Film)

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Tom Cruise and Jennifer Connelly were Hollywood's newest 'sweethearts' but they wanted to be more than just 'luxurious celebrities,' so the decided to dress up as the Marvel Comics superheroes Spider-Man and Firestar for Halloween and walk around NYC, prowling the city streets at night looking for trouble-makers and cheering on young trick-or-treaters. Spider-Man (Cruise) was armed with water-pistols, while his girlfriend/fiancee Connelly (Firestar) was armed with harmless smoke-bombs. They ran into another American movie star, Cameron Diaz who herself was dressed as the Marvel Comics super-villain Black Cat.

Black Cat (Diaz) told Spider-Man (Cruise) and Firestar (Connelly) that she was walking around intentionally looking for trouble so she could write on the Internet the next day (using an identity-masking alias/avatar), "It was shocking to me that no one noticed I was the American celebrity Cameron Diaz, since everyone was wrapped up in the festive hoopla of Halloween!" Firestar asked Black Cat why she thought she wouldn't be recognized, and Black Cat explained that if troublemakers were busy 'raising fun hell' for Halloween, they literally wouldn't care about the human beings behind the masks they wore on Halloween Eve.

Spider-Man and Firestar realized Black Cat was correct when a group of male miscreants (dressed as pirates) walked by and cooed at Black Cat saying, "Hey sexy, we don't care who you are behind that pretty little mask!" Spider-Man and Firestar asked Black Cat what her impressions/conclusions about Halloween were now, and Black Cat told them, "It's amazing how celebrities are objects of obsession in the press but totally ignored on Halloween!" Spider-Man and Firestar realized Black Cat's 'perspective' on Halloween was much more cynical than theirs and parted ways and continued wandering around the city that Halloween Eve.

Three blocks down the street, Spider-Man and Firestar came upon a strange individual dressed as the Marvel Comics super-villain Gray Goblin. The individual was riding a fuel-powered wagon and carrying pumpkins with firecrackers inside them. When Spider-Man (Cruise) and Firestar (Connelly) asked the individual what he intended to do with the firecracker-loaded pumpkin, the eerie individual (dressed as the Gray Goblin) stood up on his moving wagon and yelled, "I plan to throw these pumpkins in your face!" Spider-Man and Firestar leaped out of the way, and Gray Goblin laughed out loud, and when he removed his costume-mask (there was no one else on the street at the moment), Spider-Man and Firestar realized the individual was the American celebrity Leo DiCaprio.

Cruise and Connelly went home that night and decided to write a joint-post on the Internet (using identity-masking aliases/avatars) about the strange emotions regarding identity, self-presentation, and intellectual mask intrigue created every year on Halloween Eve. They wrote and wrote and wrote: "Maybe America's brand of multiculturalism and multi-ethnic confluence makes the wearing of masks and costumes very symbolic, since no one can detect a person's ethnicity behind the covering masks!" Their posts received positive comments, but the pair of celebrity sweethearts wondered if Halloween brought out the best or the worst in the natural human instinct to cater to both optimism and pessimism (regarding basic friendship) equally.

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[Abishai100]

The Water-Man


After seeing a life-pessimism eerie episode on Twilight Zone: The Series titled "Aqua Vita" about a strange water-delivery company that sold 'special pure water' that miraculously seemed to preserve youthful vitality or even reverse the signs of aging but made customers addicts, I started thinking about the Machiavellian value of 'self-destruction storytelling.'

Can we construe eco-pollution as humanity's self-destruction and if so, is our blind modern civilization (industrialization-related) behaviors ironically creating an 'optimism blindness'? Does this explain the community-values appeal of countless civics paranoia-themed American films such as Maniac Cop, Training Day, and The Departed?


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Eric was a water-cooler delivery man working for a respectable American company and transported water to various office buildings and schools in New York. An avid fan of Spider-Man (Marvel Comics), Eric became fascinated with the super-villain Hydro-Man who was comprised entirely of water molecules, enabling him to shape-shift and wreak havoc with the straight force of gushing water. Eric grew up very eco-conscious, since his single mother was an eco-activist and hippie who divorced her alcoholic husband (Eric's biological father) who ran away with the Hell's Angels while the couple was living on Haight-Ashbury (San Francisco).

Eric read more and more about industrialization-related waste and pollution creating global warming and unwanted climate change in Earth's various threatened ecosystems. Eric felt very paranoid and ruminated on the coming of yet another Ice Age, this one quite 'unnatural.' Eric decided to wear a special Spider-Man t-shirt when he carried his water-coolers to his delivery locations in New York beginning in the summer of 2014. Eric was reading about the rising media presence of capitalism-mogul Donald Trump and postulated that he might someday run for President. "If a finance-wizard is elected as President, Americans will have to be much more eco-conscious to stave off the dangers of consumerism-related waste and pollution!" Eric thought to himself.

Eric would wear his Spider-Man t-shirt to each delivery location in New York and when asked by secretaries and personnel who signed for the deliveries, "Why are you wearing a Spider-Man logo on your company's delivery uniform-shirt?" he would eerily reply, "Don't ask!" After about 50 deliveries, one office personnel who remembered Eric's strange reply send in an op-ed to the New York Post, which made Eric very happy:

"Every month, we have a water-cooler delivery guy come to our office building and drop off a refilled water-cooler. Well, the last few deliveries, the delivery guy (named Eric something) was wearing his usual company uniform-shirt but with a large Spider-Man (Marvel Comics) logo on it. I felt uneasy about Eric's random 'workday idealism,' so I had to ask him, 'What the heck does that comic book avatar logo signify?' and Eric strangely replied to me, 'Don't ask!' It dawned on me that Eric was using 'negative-reinforcement' psychology to deliver home the message that he believed delivery of 'pure water' was a farce in our modern industry-related pollution-coated Earth!"

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Twilight Zone ('Aqua Vita')